Many thanks for all your support and campaigning work to defend your rights to representation through the facilities agreement which was under attack by the City Council.

The campaign that the joint trade unions (ATL, NASUWT, NUT, UNISON and Unite) launched, including lobbying politicians, petitions, social media campaign, media work and other initiatives, has received tremendous support from trade unions across the city and from Coventry TUC.

The campaign has had a national focus with support from Trade Unionists far and wide, including General Secretaries of various Trade Unions.

Our Regional Officers have worked tirelessly to support us and we have received support from the Regional TUC and individual local councillors.

By standing together, we are delighted to report that following meetings between Regional trade union representatives and Cllr Ann Lucas and Cllr Damian Gannon, as well as a meeting between joint unions and the Head of HR, Shokat Lal, on Wednesday afternoon, we have reached an agreement and are now able to report the following good news:

The full Labour Group of councillors agreed a statement at their meeting on Monday evening which read:

The Council has agreed to invite the Trade Unions into meaningful negotiations which will include the full disclosure of information.

The negotiations will initially try to resolve issues within the envelope of the existing facility time agreement.

As a gesture of good faith, the Council have agreed that the conclusion of negotiations will now be on 1st October 2015 as opposed to the previously stated implementation date of 1st September 2015.

The flawed consultation has therefore beenwithdrawn.

Additionally, there was agreement with HR that:

There are guaranteed no changes to the current facilities time for school funded trade unions within this financial year.

HR have agreed to encourage all schools to buy back into the facilities budget.

A statement will be issued to Headteachers before the end of term.

We need to alert you to the fact that the Authority have made it clear they are still looking to make savings to the tune of £170-180K. Therefore, there are tough negotiations ahead.

However, we hope you agree that this is a very favourable result for us all and one that could not have been achieved without everyone working together.